"The Prophet Ezekiel (593-573 B.C.)
was taken captive to Babylon in the first deportation, and thus spent a
number of years by the river Chebar, between the Tigris and the Euphrates in
northern Mesopotamia, where he met with the exiles of the ten tribes who
were stationed there" (p.
47).

Darms was a leading critic of the British
Israelite
movement who wrote a much-distributed book called, The Delusion of
British-Israelism, which went through many printings in the 1930s
through 1950s. It is important to examine his argument because his primary
thesis coincides with that of many others in the dispensationalist movement
today: The houses of Israel and Judah were rejoined during their exile from
Palestine, and they all came back to Jerusalem as one united people immediately
after the fall of Babylon. If this were true, then there were no lost tribes, no
dispersion of the house of Israel to Europe and Britain, and the Jewish people
constitute all of Israel in the world today. As Darms expresses it,

"The thirty-seventh chapter of Ezekiel
is unquestionable proof of God's purpose to unify both houses of Israel and
to consolidate them into one nation after the Babylonian captivity" (ibid.
p. 47).

The
Valley of Dry Bones

Ezekiel chapter 37 is divided into two
distinct prophecies. In verses 1 through 14, we read the vision of the dry
bones. Darms says,

"In his vision of the dry bones in which
he saw the bones coming together 'bone to his bone', he was told that these
bones are THE WHOLE HOUSE OF ISRAEL'"
(p 47-48, emphasis in original).

This critic assumes that all twelve tribes are represented, ignoring the
Scriptural distinction between the houses of Israel and Judah. (See for example,
2 Chronicles 30:1, which contrasts "all Israel" on the one
hand, and "Judah" on the other.) Then upon that unstable platform he further
assumed that this uniting of the two houses occurred during or immediately
following the Babylonian captivity, which the text again nowhere states. This
set of baseless assumptions is the foundation for the dispensationalist
conviction that all of the Israelites of both houses returned together to
Palestine, as one people, and therefore the modern Jews represent all of Israel
in the world today. In fact, such assumptions are not only baseless, but
disproven by Scripture.

Dispensational doctrine thus consists of
one level of assumption heaped on top of another, while the spiritual factor
underlying the parable is totally ignored! A closer look at the dry bones
prophecy entirely demolishes their popular pet theory. Both houses of Israel and
Judah had been exiled from the Promised Land because of their lapse into
paganism and idolatry. This was the central issue behind YEHOVAH's exile of the
chosen people. Ezekiel's prophecy concerns a spiritual
transformation that would take place as a miraculous Divine intervention. Yet
the presence and work of the holy spirit in
this prophecy is never even acknowledged by these dispensational folks who are
so eager to remake Israel's moral restoration into a gathering of the godless.

The words "spirit" and "breath" in these
verses are both translations of the Hebrew "ruach," meaning
YEHOVAH's spirit. This
prophecy is not about dead bodies being resurrected, but of a spiritually dead
people restored to spiritual life and brought back to YEHOVAH God. The restoration of
Israel here spoken of is therefore first and foremost a Divine work resulting in
a spiritual reformation. To insist, as dispensationalists do, that Israel would
be restored and re-gathered
in a condition of pagan immorality makes a mockery of the
Biblical text.

The last part of the prophecy states,

"...and I shall place you in your own
land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it,
saith the LORD."

It is an entirely baseless assumption to
claim that being placed in "your own land" means old Canaan, especially when
YEHOVAH God
promised in 2 Samuel 7:10 while they
dwelled in Canaan that,

"I will appoint a place for my people
Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own,
and move no more..."

There was no point in promising that a
land would be appointed in the future if it had already been fulfilled in
Canaan! Further, since the Jews were later dispersed out of Palestine in 70 A.D.
by the Romans, YEHOVAH would have been lying in telling them through Samuel that
they would "move no more!" Obviously then, both Ezekiel and Samuel's parallel
prophecies were speaking of a land other than old Palestine, where Israel would
be spiritually restored.

"The fulfillment of this prophecy of
Ezekiel is seen, first, in the union of both houses of Israel (Ephraim with
Judah) in the land of their captivity; then, in their return as 'one nation'
to 'the mountains of Israel'..." (ibid. p.
48).

Thus, Darms and his fellow
dispensationalists again insist that the reunion of the two houses of Israel, as
typified in the joining of the two sticks, was fulfilled in a condition of
godless unbelief during the Babylonian captivity. Does their interpretation
really fit the prophecy? Was the reuniting of the two houses of Israel an
unspiritual godless re-gathering?

There are several key points Ezekiel makes
in this prophecy, which cannot be made to fit the dispensationalist theory.
First, we read in verse 22, "one king shall be king to them all..." It is a
matter of historical record that from the time of the Babylonian captivity to
this day the Jews have had no king --
not one! -- but were instead under a succession
of rulerships including the kings of Persia, Greece, Syria,
and Rome until the fall of Jerusalem and removal of its inhabitants in 70 A.D.

Moving forward to our day, the modern
Israeli state also has never had a king.

Ezekiel again emphasizes in verse 23 that
YEHOVAH God "will cleanse them: so shall they be my people, and I will be their God." To
say that a people in pagan immorality represented the prophetic cleansed,
God-honoring nation, is an obvious delusion.

Again Ezekiel prophesied in verse 24 --

"And David my servant shall be king
over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my
judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them."

Since historical King David was then dead
over four hundred years, it is obvious that Ezekiel was speaking prophetically
of David's greater son, the Messiah. Have the modern Israelis -- or any of their
ancestors -- ever worshipped the Messiah Yeshua, or did they instead reject
him? Do they observe YEHOVAH's statutes? The Messiah himself said:

"Did not Moses give you the law, and
yet none of you keepeth the law" (John 7:19).

and James said that

"... whosoever shall...offend in one
point, he is guilty of all" (2:10).

It is obvious that the two houses of
Israel neither kept YEHOVAH's statutes nor acknowledged the Messiah in the B.C. era.

Continuing to the next verse (25), we
read --

"And they shall dwell in the land that
I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and
they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their
children's children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for
ever."

Ezekiel said that they would dwell in the
land forever! If he was speaking of the end of the Babylonian captivity in 538
B.C. as the dispensationalists insist, then he was a false prophet, for the
Romans later came and took away "their place and nation" in 70 A.D. (John
11:48). Even more absurd, the dispensationalist theory would logically require
us to believe that the eternal reign of this Davidic Messiah also began at the
close of the Babylonian captivity! (v. 24-25). This is because the prophetic
parts of Ezekiel's "two sticks" vision are interconnected, and cannot be
arbitrarily assigned to widely disparate time fulfillments. Thus, Mr. Darms
strains our credulity -- and the facts -- in suggesting that Israel and Judah were
reunited long ago in Babylon.

In verse 26, Ezekiel tells us that the
rejoining of Israel and Judah would be associated with an everlasting covenant
between them and YEHOVAH God Almighty, and that YEHOVAH would be "in the midst of them forevermore."
Has this prophecy ever yet been fulfilled in the Jewish people? More
specifically, was it fulfilled at the time that the Babylonian captivity ended?
The Messiah had not even arrived yet!

The final verse of the prophecy, verse 28,
reads:

"And the heathen shall know that I the
LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary [Temple] shall be in the midst of them for
evermore."

Although there is popular talk today about
the Temple of Jerusalem being rebuilt, even dispensationalists teach that this
has a Millennial fulfillment. Yet our critics take another part of the same
prophecy and insist on it being a Babylonian era fulfillment, because without
this crutch their whole argument collapses that "the Two Houses are already
rejoined and reunited in the Jewish people of today."

The
Place of Israel's Exile

We began our article by quoting Anton
Darm's statement that both houses of Israel, Ephraim and Judah, "were stationed
there" in Babylonia "by the river Chebar, between the Tigris and the Euphrates
in northern Mesopotamia." The average Christian might indeed take this to be a
very scholarly statement, yet any competent Biblical or historical scholar would
know that it is, in fact, an example of unscholarly utter ignorance, and riddled
with error!

First, Babylonia was not located "in
northern Mesopotamia" but in southern Mesopotamia.

Second, it is an established fact,
supported by clear Scripture, that Ephraim and Judah were not exiled to the same
place. Ephraim was exiled to "Halah and in Habor by the river of Gozan, and in
the cities of the Medes" (2 Kings 17:6), not to Babylonia. The location of these
places of Ephraim's exile is in a wide band across the northern regions of the
Assyrian empire. The House of Judah was exiled instead to the River Chebar, a
Babylonian canal in southern Mesopotamia a few miles outside the city of Babylon
(Ezekiel 1:1, 3; 3:15, 23; 10:15-22; 45:3).

Israel's
True Restoration

The Bible makes it clear that the two
houses of Israel would be reunited only in faith in the Messiah. Ezekiel's two
prophecies in chapter 37 both make this clear. Other prophecies do also, such as
the prophet Jeremiah's inspired words in chapter 3, verses 14-15:

"... I will take you one of a city,
and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion: And I will give you
pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and
understanding."

In the New Testament, we read in John
11:52 concerning the Messiah, that

"he should gather together in one the
children of God that were scattered abroad."

It is clear that there would be no true
reuniting and restoration of all of Israel outside of faith in the Messiah. Thus,
the
popular modern theology that Israel would be re-gathered
in godless unbelief is without Scriptural foundation.

-- Edited By John D. Keyser.

Hope of Israel
Ministries -- Preparing the Way for the Return of YEHOVAH God
and His Messiah!